The RFQ-to-Order workflow, end to end

1. STAGE 01Building· Wave 1 · M2

   RFQ intake

   Pulls RFQs out of the four places they actually arrive — a shared estimating inbox, a WhatsApp thread, your website form, and marketplace enquiries — and turns each one into a structured RFQ record with a number, a customer, a due date and a line-item table. Attachments are kept with the RFQ, not buried in a mail client.

   Data it holds — Source channel, received timestamp, requester and their plant, raw email body, every attachment, extracted part numbers, quantities, materials, target date and target price.

   RFQ intake and multi-channel capture
2. STAGE 02Building· Wave 1 · M3

   Technical review routing

   Routes the RFQ to the person who can actually price it. Rules run on material, process, part size and customer, so a stainless weldment goes to your fabrication estimator and a 5-axis job goes to the machinist who quotes 5-axis. Anything missing a drawing, a tolerance or a quantity gets flagged before it eats an estimator's afternoon.

   Data it holds — Assigned estimator, review checklist state, open technical questions back to the customer, drawing revision referenced, and the clock since receipt.

   Technical review and RFQ routing
3. STAGE 03Building· Wave 1 · M4

   Cost buildup

   A 4-column cost buildup per line: material, process, outside services, and overhead plus margin. Quantity breaks sit side by side so you can price 10, 50 and 250 pieces in one pass. Margin guardrails warn the estimator before a line goes out below the floor the owner set. Pricing walks a hierarchy before it reaches the buildup at all — contract price, then customer price, then the quantity break — so an account with a negotiated price list gets the price you agreed rather than today's cost.

   Data it holds — Per-line material spec and weight, setup and run minutes by operation, outside-service quotes, scrap allowance, freight, the applied margin, the price list a line came from and who approved an exception.

   4-column cost buildupContract and customer price lists
4. STAGE 04Live

   Quote assembly and send

   Turns the buildup into a quote document your customer recognises — line items, lead times, tooling, validity window, terms — and sends it by email or WhatsApp with a read receipt. The follow-up cadence starts the moment it leaves.

   Data it holds — Quote number, revision, validity date, per-line price and lead time, terms, the exact PDF that was sent, and the delivery and open events after it.

   Quote builder and send
5. STAGE 05Building· Wave 1 · M3

   Revision control

   Every change makes a new revision — Rev 0, Rev 1, Rev 2 — and a diff view shows exactly what moved between them: price, quantity, lead time, material, line added, line removed. When a buyer says 'you quoted us less last time', you open the diff instead of digging through sent mail.

   Data it holds — Full revision chain with no retention limit on any tier, the diff between any two revisions, the reason for the change and the person who made it.

   Quote revisions and diff view
6. STAGE 06Live

   Acceptance and e-signature

   The customer accepts the quote in a browser and signs it. The signed revision is locked, so the accepted price and lead time are a fixed record rather than a version of a file somebody re-saved.

   Data it holds — Signed revision, signer name and email, IP and timestamp, accepted line items, and the countersigned PDF.

   E-signature and quote acceptance
7. STAGE 07Building· Wave 1 · M4

   Purchase order capture

   Reads the customer PO — usually a PDF attached to an email — and lines it up against the accepted quote. Price, quantity, part number, revision and delivery date are compared line for line, and mismatches are raised before the job hits the floor.

   Data it holds — PO number and date, OCR'd line items, the quote line each PO line maps to, every mismatch and how it was resolved, and the buyer's terms.

   PO capture and matching
8. STAGE 08Live

   Order handoff and dispatch

   Hands the confirmed order to whoever runs your floor — your ERP or job-tracking system by connector or webhook, or a work order pack if you run on paper. Production milestones come back in, so inside sales can answer 'where is my order' without walking to the shop.

   Data it holds — Order record linked to quote and PO, milestone events from the ERP, promised versus current ship date, delivery risk flags, freight details and the packing and dispatch record.

   Order handoff and dispatch
9. STAGE 09Building· Wave 1 · M5

   Reorder

   Watches the parts a customer buys on a rhythm and tells you when the next order is due before the buyer calls. Repeat work is quoted from the last accepted revision instead of being priced from scratch, which is where most shops quietly lose margin.

   Data it holds — Order history per part and per customer, inferred reorder interval, last accepted price, current cost delta, and the suggested requote date.

   Reorder prediction

Quotes never followed up

Count + value

Open quotes past their follow-up date with no contact logged.

Quotes expired unconverted

Count + value

Validity window closed while the quote was still open.

Margin given away

Quoted vs floor

Lines shipped below the margin floor, by estimator and by customer.

Repeat parts not requoted

Parts + last price

Repeat work still priced off a costing older than your material moves.

Dormant accounts

Accounts + last order

Customers whose order rhythm has broken.

RFQ response lag

Median hours

Time from RFQ received to quote sent, by estimator and channel.

Starter shows three of the six. Professional shows all six. Enterprise adds custom metrics on top.

Starter ships the Owner and Salesperson screens. Professional ships all eight. Enterprise adds custom role-based access control on top of them.

This is not an ERP, MRP, CAD, BOM, or advanced CPQ system — it manages customer RFQs, quotes, follow-ups, and order handoff.

One line in that sentence is worth being precise about. We do ship a manufacturing CPQ Lite — a cost buildup with quantity breaks, alternates, margin guardrails and revisions, priced from contract and customer price lists before it ever falls back to that buildup. What we are not is an enterprise configure-price-quote suite with a catalogue configurator and a constraint solver. Both things are true at the same time, and the CPQ work is in development against Wave 1 Milestone 4.